Burr Asks For Ethics Investigation Over Senate Stock Scandal

Topline: Senator Richard Burr, R-N.C., under fire for selling large amounts of stock before the coronavirus panic began and markets really began to falter, has asked for the senate ethics committee to investigate his actions, saying he believes they’ll clear him. 

• Burr is one of four senators — Senators Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga, James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., are the others — who, according to financial disclosures and reported by ProPublica, the Center for Responsive Politics and the Daily Beast, sold large amount of stock. 
• Only Burr has indicated that he personally sold his stock; Loeffler, Inhofe, and Feinstein say they weren’t personally involved in the stock trading decisions. 
• Both Burr and Feinstein are on the senate intelligence committee, and receive confidential briefings. 
• Loeffler, whose husband is Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, sold between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000 worth of shares starting on January 24; Feinstein, also a member of the intelligence committee, sold $1.5 million to $6 million worth of stock from January 31 to February 18 in Allogene Therapeutics, a California-based biotech company, according to the New York Times; James Inhofe, R-Okla., sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in Paypal, Apple and Brookfield Asset Management on January 27, according to a disclosure report also reported by the New York Times. 
• On February 27, Burr attended a closed-door meeting in North Carolina in which he privately warned of the potential economic dangers of the crisis, just as President Trump was tamping down concerns about the virus, according to NPR. 
• It is illegal for anyone, including sitting members of Congress, to use information not available to the public to inform trading decisions, as noted here. 

Big number: $628,000 to $1.72 million. That’s the range of stock value that Burr sold on February 13, a week before the market really began to take a hit (they included hotel and restaurant industry stocks, which have seen their stocks plummet during the pandemic)

Crucial quote: “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we have seen in recent history,” Burr said during the private luncheon in North Carolina on February 27, according to a recording obtained by NPR. “It’s probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

Key background: Burr was one of only three senators in 2012 to vote against banning insider trading for Congress.  While both Burr and Loeffler were selling off stocks, the senators also downplayed the threat of the virus in public. Inhofe was one of the eight senators who voted against the most recent coronavirus relief bill. 

What to watch for: Will pressure increase for Burr or any of the other senators to resign? On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez called for Burr to step down. 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson also demanded Burr explain himself or “he must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading.”

“He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn’t warn the public . . . Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money.”

And will this lead to pleas for lawmakers to restrict stock ownership by members of Congress?

Tangent: David Frum of The Atlantic writes about how Trump is hoping the Supreme Court will overturn decades of settled law to hide his tax returns and business records.